Conventionally, a navigation apparatus for calculating a guide route avoiding a specific road area such as an area which charges for entries, has been suggested in, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-181571, Japanese Patent No.3384293, and Japanese Patent No.2003-35546. By use of such an apparatus, a route guide can be provided for bypassing the entry into a toll road, city area, and the like which charge for entry.
However, for a vehicle to be permitted to enter a road area, a charge for the entry into the road area needs to be previously paid. The above conventional apparatus cannot meet the case where the entry into the road area during a predetermined period is permitted when the charge is paid. As an example of a road area where an entry of a vehicle during a charging period is permitted when a charge is previously paid (hereinafter called a time limit charging road area), congestion charging areas are institutionalized in London.
In this institution, a person who wants to enter a congestion charging area by use of a vehicle previously makes a notification about a license plate of the vehicle, and previously pays a charge for a desired day. The payment information is notified to the authorities. The authorities collect license plate information about all the vehicles entering the congestion charging area. The authorities charge a penalty on an owner of a vehicle of a license plate not contained in the information about the payment for the entry day.
In such an institution, a guide route calculation for only avoiding an entry into a road area is insufficient. It is desirable that guide route calculating methods are switched in accordance with whether a user's vehicle has paid a charge for the day. Here, the user of the vehicle is, for example, a driver or a passenger of the vehicle.
Further, such a conventional technique cannot always appropriately respond to the case where a charge amount for an entry of a vehicle into a road area is determined in accordance with a past entry history of the vehicle into the road area.
For example, a charging system may be established where a vehicle is charged for its first entry into a road area on a date, and once the vehicle has been charged, the vehicle is not charged no matter how many times the vehicle enters the road area during the date. In such a charging system, a calculation of a guide route avoiding an entry into a road area is insufficient. It is desirable that methods for calculating guide routes are switched in accordance with whether a vehicle has already entered the area.
Additionally, the above conventional technique cannot respond to the case where it is determined whether a vehicle avoids entering a road area in accordance with a past entry history of the vehicle into the road area, in addition to the above charging case.